As many as sixteen activists have been arrested, five of whom are currently out on bail.
The Bombay High Court on Tuesday granted bail to activist Gautam Navlakha, arrested in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case.
A division bench headed by Justice AS Gadkari said Navlakha's bail plea was “permissible”. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has urged the court to stay the execution of the order for a period of six weeks so that it can appeal to the Supreme Court. The sofa remained fine for three weeks. Navlakha, who was arrested in August 2018, was granted house arrest by the Supreme Court in November last year. He currently resides in Navi Mumbai.
The high court granted Navlakha bail against a surety of Rs 1 lakh. He is the seventh suspect in the case to be released on bail. In April this year, a special court had refused to grant bail to Navlakha, noting that there was prima facie evidence to show that the activist was an active member of the banned group CPI (Maoist).
In his appeal to the Supreme Court, Navlakha said the special court had erred in denying him bail. This is Navlakha's second round of appeal in the Supreme Court, seeking regular bail. Navlakha had earlier moved the Supreme Court after the special NIA court rejected his regular bail plea in September last year. The NIA had subsequently opposed Navlakha's bail plea, claiming that he was introduced to a Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) general for his recruitment, which shows his link with the organisation.
However, the Supreme Court held that the reasoning in the special court's order was cryptic and contained no analysis of the evidence relied upon by the prosecution. The Supreme Court had ruled that the bail application should be heard again by the special court and remanded the matter back to the trial court. She had also instructed the special judge to complete the hearing within four weeks. Accordingly, Navlakha had moved the special court to rehear his case for regular bail.
The Special Court had subsequently heard the plea again on the same pleas and dismissed the bail application giving rise to the present appeal. The case relates to alleged inflammatory speeches at the Elgar Parishad conclave held in Pune on December 31, 2017, which police say sparked violence the next day near the Koregaon-Bhima war memorial on the outskirts of the western city of Maharashtra .
As many as sixteen activists have been arrested, five of whom are currently out on bail. Scholar-activist Anand Teltumbde, lawyer Sudha Bharadwaj, Vernon Gonsalves, Arun Ferrira and Mahesh Raut are out on bail, while poet Varavara Rao is currently out on bail on health grounds. Navlakha is the seventh suspect to be released on bail in the case.
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First print: December 19, 2023 | 3:32 PM IST